The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Holy City Head Hunter, Part 2 of 7

Mickey Malloy knows there is something funny about the Holy City Head Hunter, and he’s brought in an expert to help stave off disaster. Meanwhile, British official Hampton Sinclair begins his own spy hunt.

This story is featured in the anthology Bourbon, Bullets, Broads, and Bourbon, which is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, or as a DRM-free ePub.

This is Part 2 of The Case of the Holy City Head Hunter. If you hadn’t had a chance to read Part 1 yet, stop now and check it out first.

Content Warnings: Gore, Mild Swearing, Tobacco Use, Alcohol Use, Creeps, Nazis

MONDAY MORNING, MAY 4, 1942
FULLER'S TEN TO TWO
FRENCH QUARTER, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

Mick was already halfway through his second bourbon when a tall bespectacled Black man in a stylish blue suit pulled out a chair and sat across from him.

“Inspector Malloy,” the man said, his Ethiopian accent unmaskable. He settled into the chair and set down his briefcase, inciting a murmur among the restaurant's few other patrons. This particular greasy spoon pulled double duty as a neighborhood diner and the lobby for the run-down hotel upstairs. One would think the locals and regulars wouldn't be as perturbed seeing strangers there.

“And you're Doctor Abebe,” Mick said. He watched some especially grumbly men staring down the new arrival out of the corner of his eye. All it would take is one wrong word and it could get ugly in here real quick. Mick wasn't especially interested in getting kicked out of his hotel, so he picked up his glass and poured it down his throat. He wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve and suggested: “Maybe we should take this somewhere else.”

“Not necessary,” Doctor Abebe insisted. “And call me Ifa.”

“Mickey.”

“Good to meet you, Mickey,” Ifa said.

“Yeah, you too,” Mick grunted. The more rankled patrons hauled themselves out of their booth and made their way through the small restaurant. They shoved chairs aside and gathered behind Ifa in a small huddle.

“Hey, pal,” the middlest one grunted. He'd rolled his sleeves halfway up like he was going to try something.

“Buddy - !” Mick started, but the goon cut him off.

“I'll have words for you, too, but I wasn't talking to you yet,” he snapped. “I said, 'hey, pal.' Look at me when I'm talking to you, boy.”

Ifa slowly turned in his chair to look up at the red-faced gorilla and his sweaty friends.

“I am very interested in what words you choose to speak next,” Ifa said. His voice was low and hollow. Mick watched his hand slither underneath his coat, grasping for some unseen weapon.

“How about all of you shut up and sit back down!” a small voice piped up. The assembled goons parted and allowed a thirteen year-old boy through. He was barely five feet tall with a blonde mop and an armful of dirty dishes.

“Bobby, you know what you got sitting at this table?” the talkative goon asked.

“I don't know, Owen, let me check,” Bobby sighed. He set the plates on the table in front if Mick with a clatter, then turned to Ifa:

“Sir, this is a family business,” he said. Owen smirked behind him and crossed his arms. Bobby continued: “Let me ask you something.”

“What is that?” Ifa asked. Mick could see a vein ticking in Ifa's temple.

“What color is your money?” Bobby asked.

“My money?”

“It's green, isn't it?”

“It is,” Ifa replied.

“That's the only color I care about,” Bobby said.

“Bobby, you can't let - !” Owen started, but the kid cut him off.

“Owen, your two frankfurters and a beer three days a week ain't keeping the lights on,” Bobby snapped. Owen and his grunts grumbled and slunk away back to their booth like dogs confronted with the newspaper. “Customer's a customer, I got my family counting on this place. What can I get you, sir?”

“Tea, please,” Ifa said.

“Pal, I'm gonna go get you a menu,” Bobby said. He gathered up the plates he'd dropped into from on Mick and ambled back toward the kitchen, muttering to himself: “Didn't stick my neck out for one glass of sweet tea.”

“Not sweet - !” Ifa tried to say, but Mick cut him off.

“He's getting you a sweet tea, and you're gonna drink it,” Mick grunted under his breath. Ifa looked around and nodded. He got it.

They stayed silent until Bobby returned with a sweating glass. The entire restaurant watched as Ifa lifted it to his lips. He took a long sip, concentrated on the flavor, then forced a smile and nodded. Mick felt every patron exhale in relief at once. An insult against the house sweet tea would've been more than they could handle. Bobby left him a menu and slid back behind the bar and its flat top griddles and hissed just a bit louder than the irritated patrons skulking in the booths.

Once the general murmur of conversations started up again, Mick felt safe enough to talk.

“You get those pictures I sent you?”

“They were very interesting,” Ifa said.

“Do you recognize that chicken scratch?” Mick asked.

“I was sent here to interpret Abwehr communiques in an attempt to recover Official Sinclair, Inspector Malloy,” Ifa said.

“Just Mickey, and?” Mick asked.

“This does not appear to be within the purview of my mission,” Ifa pointed out.

“Tell me, how many HYDRA intercepts have come across your desk in the last week?” Mick wondered.

“Well, none.”

“And what is the only thing anyone in this town'll talk about?”

“This Head Hunter, but - !”

“This whole circus is going to be a distraction or worse. Best case scenario is that it takes whatever local back-up we might have had out of play. Worst case, we get caught up in a city-wide panic. You tell me. No HYDRA updates means we got the time and the ability to get a killer off the table.”

“You make a lot of sense,” Ifa considered. “What made you suspect it not to be as it seems?”

“The M.O.,” Mick said. “Each killed the same way: two clean stabs, one to the chest, one to the voice box. They were killed from the front, with no struggle, as painless and quick as killing with a knife can get.”

“So they were not suspecting trouble,” Ifa said.

“Exactly!” Mick replied, pounding the table with his fist. Every eye in the restaurant snapped up to watch him, so he took it down a notch. “This act that the killer's putting on is the most off-putting thing someone who ain't an investigator could think of. It's a show, and it don't make sense. Say we did have some nightmared-up Satanic, pagan, voodoo killer. Well that person wouldn't getting within a hundred yards of soft-handed Charleston aristocracy, much less inside quiet, gentle stabbing distance.”

“It would have to look like someone trustworthy to them,” Ifa said. He was picking up what Mck was putting down.

“So I say it's all a show, put on for us. Tell me you recognize these symbols.”

“Oh, I very much do,” Ifa replied. He opened his briefcase and removed the glossy photos and laid them out on the table. He'd laid masking tape over the more explicit areas of the images so as to save any of the other diners' from losing their lunch if they caught a glimpse. All that was left was the weird symbols that had been painted all over the each crime scene. No matter the location, whether it be the fountain at the Battery, the alley behind the Market, or the courtyard in the art museum, each scene was marked with the exact same symbols in the same sequence. It was eery.

“This ideogram here,” Ifa said, pointing at something Mick could only describe as a rounded square blooming with shark teeth, “Represents Or-Lan, the Atlantean god of the harvest and king of the undersea.”

“Okay, okay,” Mick said, nodding. He hadn't expected the gobbledegook to stand for anything at all. He pointed at the next scrawling, something like a squiggly knife with a fish tail for a handle. “How about this one?”

“That is Ankri-Pen, Or-Lan's living sword and closest advisor,” Ifa replied. “This sequence describes how Or-Lan feasted on virgin sacrifices until he was full and fell asleep.”

“Holy hell,” Mick said. His mind was racing. These dead kids.

“Then, while Or-Lan slumbered, Ankri-Pen visited Io-Lin, Or-Lan's estranged wife, and impregnated her,” Ifa explained, tracing his finger around the encircled runes. “Or-Lan awoke from his nap twenty years later to find he had a full-grown son, Kur-Lan. Or-Lan was so proud that he took his 'son' to hunt the great sea urchin Ob-Ham. When they confronted the beast, Kur-Lan shoved his false father onto its spines. He took Ankri-Pen for himself and ruled the undersea for a thousand years of prosperity.”

“Damn,” Mick said.

“Scholars of modern central European prevarication refer to this story as the 'Urchin Cycle,'” Ifa added.

“Central Europe. That's kraut country,” Mick considered. He hated seeing a boogeyman under every bed, but with Nazis in the house, you had to look every time. “So what does this mean for our murders?”

“In America, you might call it 'jack shit,'” Ifa answered.

“'Jack shit?'”Mick asked. Suddenly his brain caught up to his ears. “Wait, did you say Atlantis?”

“I have paraphrased this story from the fifth volume of Golden Jack's Adventures in the Sunken Country.” Ifa explained. He pulled a photograph of a beat-up paperback book out of his briefcase and handed it to Mick. Its wrinkled cover featured a bare-chested bronze slab of a man fist-fighting a metal lobster the size of a horse while a trio of buxom mermaids swooned in the background. Ifa continued:

“That copy belongs to one of my colleagues in Baltimore. The series was actually quite popular for a short time.”

“So what the hell am I looking at?” Mick wondered as his gaze bounced between the book and the censored photos.

“The symbols left around the corpses are identical to those featured on page sixty-five in this English translation of the 1906 Austrian illustrated edition. The symbols themselves were created as nonsense by artist Heikki Rantanen, a notorious recreational ether user from Finland. Do you see how the ideogram-style of the character names differs so wildly from the action words? It is a drug-addict's unstudied attempt to create something exotic for Western readers. He haphazardly and fairly offensively combined Japanese kanji, Arabic script, and Mayan hieroglyphics together and expected that no one would notice. Laziness.”

Mick smirked. Ifa was more upset about the wanton abuse of nonsense letters than anything else.

“Are you saying that readers of these books formed some kind of murder cult?” Mickey said carefully.

“I should say not,” Ifa huffed. “The Golden Jack series only appealed to English-language readers for a very short period. Once the Great War began, it nearly vanished from collective memory.”

“So no backwoods cult at all?”

“None,” Ifa replied firmly.

“That's what I was afraid of,” Mick said.

“In what way?” Ifa asked.

“It means that the deaths weren't the point of the killings. The killer got something else out of this,” Mick explained.

“Could they be a threat, or a message? The latest victim was the daughter of a general, and the other two came from very prominent families,” Ifa suggested.

Before Mick could answer, he realized Bobby had materialized by his elbow.

“What'll it be?” the kid asked.

“Ah, well,” Ifa stammered. He snatched up the menu and ran his eyes up and down it.

“He'll need a minute,” Mick said. Bobby sighed and turned to walk away, but Mick stopped him: “Hey, kid.”

“Yeah, grandpa?” Bobby sighed, as if talking to Mick was the most taxing thing he'd had to do all day. Mick ignored the sass.

“You heard about the Head Hunter?”

“Course I have,” Bobby snapped.

“Know anything about the victims? Exley, Garnette, Marion? They were about your age.”

“Turns out, me and a bunch of millionaires' kids run in different circles,” he said as he wiped his hands on his grease-stained apron.

“Well if I was looking for their kind of circle, where do you think it'd run?” Mick asked.

“How should I know?” Bobby said. He was getting antsy. He had handful of tables to cover, and there didn't seem to be anyone else serving, taking orders, collecting on tabs, or even cooking.

“This help?” Mick asked. He help up a crisp oner, some of his petty cash. Bobby snatched it right up.

“Folks like that hang out south of Broad,” he answered, “Bunch of fancy-pants private clubs down there. Couldn't tell you you which one to check out though.”

Mick held up another dollar and that one disappeared into Bobby's pocket as quick as the first.

“I wasn't holding out, I really got no clue, pal,” Bobby said. “Thanks for the buck, though. And I'll be back for your order. Two smackers don't get you out of that.”

Mick watched as Bobby moved on to the next table with a smirk. He liked the kid's style. He took a long, calming breath, slugged back the last of his cold coffee, then got down to brass tacks with Ifa:

“If this is some sicko or terrorist, that puts a timer on this thing,” Mick told him. “That means no matter how many Black folks' doors get kicked down, the cops won't find anything. They'll just keep kicking and arresting and coming up empty. The people in this city are worked up, they're scared, and they're blood-thirsty. We're a couple days from a roaming lynch mob if we don't close this case definitively, a couple days from another Greenwood.”

“Damn,” Ifa said.

“What can you tell me about this Golden Jack thing? It's got to be connected.”

“They were among the works I studied for my thesis on animal motifs in protofascist media, though I decided not to use them as examples. The Golden Jack stories, known as Golden Jan in the original script, did originate in western Czechoslovakia, but they pre-date the advent of Nazism. As the symbols depicted in the crime scenes only appear in the English-language illustrated edition, I assume our killer to be an American or British citizen. Beyond that, I would estimate the suspect to be a Caucasian male, between forty and fifty-five years old. Though the Golden Jan stories do not contain outright fascist elements, Sepp Straub, the author, considered himself an amateur ethnologist, and his theories are reflected in his work. His novels were directly targeted at young white men and boys. The featured characters of other races and female characters were often relegated to be either victims or the butts of vile jokes. In my opinion, this would preclude those audiences' casual and long-term enjoyment of these novels.”

“So a white guy getting up there in years,” Mick muttered to himself.

“Someone fitting your description, actually,” Ifa said, “Though it would have to be someone somewhat more, ah, book-inclined.”

“You're saying I don't read?” Mick grunted.

“Do you?” Ifa asked.

“Yeah, I got files up to my eyeballs,” Mick huffed. “I read 'til I go blue in the damn face.”

“My apologies,” Ifa offered. He took another sip of his sweet tea. Despite his earlier reticence, he was revisiting his beverage quite a bit. He might've gotten converted.

“But no, unless it was a comic book, I didn't do much reading as a kid, you got me,” Mick admitted. “So we need an aged bookworm, white as a lily.”

“It is not much of a start, I'm afraid,” Ifa said.

“Better than we had, and miles ahead of the locals,” Mick replied. “Though I wouldn't expect much help from them. They're convinced they know the deal, and telling 'em it's a white guy with his nose in a book ain't gonna do much to dissuade them.”

“Where are they going first?” Ifa asked.

“The detective mentioned some river islands,” Mick said.

“Gullah Geechee communities,” Ifa said. “I am familiar with their dialect. Perhaps I can help them.”

“How so?” Mick asked. Words weren't going to do much to slow down the vengeful blue tide that Barnwell would send washing over them.

“Inspector, I trained for combat like every official,” Ifa explained. “And before I joined the Office, I worked to repulse the Italians from my homeland under Corbyn Farisi and la Mandragora. Their guerrilla tactics led to many victories. I have fought my fair share of battles, in the open and from the shadows. I have spilled blood and disappeared into the night. You, of all officials, understand how this is done.”

“Hey, cram all that,” Mick said. No use in Ifa getting worked up in the middle of the restaurant, ranting about dead Italians and blood and Mick's past. Mickey hissed under his breath:

“You ain't here to kill anyone. Half of that shit you learned from Farisi was recruitment, defense, and evasion. That's what you need.”

“So you you agree that we need to do something for these people?” Ifa asked.

“I agree that if we don't do anything, the kids that got their heads cut off won't be the only victims here,” Mick said.

“Indeed.”

“So I take it you're all in on sweeping up this Head Hunter mess?”

“I shall do what I can to stop innocent families from being brutalized in the search,” Ifa said.

“I know the Mandragora's reputation, Ifa. Her tactics don't work here, this ain't a war zone. You can't go around cutting police officers' throats. You go there and help these folks stay one step ahead of the law until I can iron the rest of this out, got it?”

“I understand,” Ifa said.

“You help the falsely demonized avoid handcuffs or worse, I find the asshole framing 'em. Then, when town is calmed back down, we find our weapon dealers and our missing official.”

“Agreed,” Ifa said. He smirked and took another long gulp of his tea.

Mick looked around. No one else in the place had heard what had been said, but they'd felt the tension. Everyone was trying not to look while also being too scared to take their eyes off them. Mick's sweeping gaze sent every head in the place snapping in the opposite direction. Bobby was behind the bar, his attention suddenly back on the slab of ham he just realized was burning.

“Now, pick something off the menu,” Mick said. “I recommend the hash.”

TUESDAY EVENING, APRIL 7, 1942
LIFEBOAT STATION (INACTIVE)
GROOMSPORT, NORTHERN IRELAND, UNITED KINGDOM

Hampton Sinclair checked his wristwatch. Its radium face caught moonlight and reflected it back green.

“Damn it all,” he muttered to himself. He'd been sitting still in his paper canoe for over an hour, and the blasted Henry Hood was running thirty minutes behind schedule.

The old lifeboat station creaked around him as the westerly wind buffeted against its thin walls. The water was calmer than Sinclair'd expected, but each pulse of the tide reminded him that the narrow disposable boat he was sitting in was only rated to survive in water for another two hours. If he hadn't jetted over and boarded the Hood by the time the disposable hull dissolved around him, he'd be swimming to America.

Sinclair gave his gear a quick check for the thousandth time. His Welrod pistol was secure in its waterproof holster, his Bowie knife buttoned into the sheath at the small of his back, and his wormline riata tied tight around his chest like a pale green bandolier. He was undertaking this mission alone, so if he ran afoul of any situation that beyond the scope of his meager kit he'd be bowled over even if he were carrying the whole of the Royal Arsenal.

A low fog horn lowed mournfully across the small bay. Sinclair leaned forward in his seat, peering around the edge of the station's open door. He adjusted his blindered binoculars and studied the transport ship chugging through the dark water. It would be a few more miles until it joined its convoy and underwent blackout protocols. With its running lights blazing and the moon bright as a neon street sign, Sinclair could clearly read the name painted on its hull.

The Hood, finally.

Sinclair twisted around and yanked the ripcord on the paper canoe's little outboard. The small engine coughed to life, sputtering as its rubber began to churn through the surf. Despite its two-cylinder rattle, the Office's miniature trolling motor was remarkably quiet and pushed the ultra-light boat faster than Sinclair'd expected. He tucked in low and tide to kept the spray out of his eyes and held on and he jetted out into the open water

The paper canoe was light as a feather at full speed. It skipped off each swell, threatening with each wave to gather enough wind beneath its bow to send it, and Sinclair, tumbling through the air. Maneuvering it across the inlet was a game of balance, trying to find the sweet spot between acceleration and restraint. Too much gunning the engine would put Sinclair in the drink and the boat upside down, while dawdling would see his rapidly disintegrating boat melt around him.

It took the better part of twenty minutes to catch up to the chugging Hood. Sinclair strapped his spider socks on tight. When he sidled up next to the looming transport, he was all too happy to disembark from the disposable canoe; he could already feel its bottom softening as the treated paper hull soaked through. When he was just a meter or two away from the dazzle-painted ship, Sinclair practicaly jumped at its towering hull, hands spread wide. He felt like he'd bounce right off, but the half-living palms on his spider mittens dug into the ship's pitted hull and held firm. Beneath him, the Hood's wake surged and swallowed his paper canoe, folding it in half before dragging it under.

“Thanks for the ride, old girl,” Sinclair told the boat. Of course, sinking to the bottom of the Belfast Lough and dissolving into pulp was what it had been made to do. Even its puttering little engine was designed to be eaten by the salt and tides, and within two weeks it would just be scraps and sand. There'd be no evidence he'd ever been there.

Sinclair dug his toes in and let the little squirmy hooks on his shoes bite into the hull. He huffed and pinched his forefinger to his thumb, sending a mild shock through his palm. The hooked legs spasmed at once, releasing their grip. His hand freed, Sinclair reached upward and let the mitten snag a new hold. He repeated the process with his other hand, then both feet, eventually worming his way hand-over-hand up to the rail. By the time he reached the top, it was all he could do to keep from wheezing.

The guard aboard the Hood was light. It was barely an hour out of port and not yet out of sight of the land. Sinclair understood why they'd feel comfortable this early into their voyage, but as he slunk between shadows, he couldn't help but wonder what they were missing other than his embarkation.

HYDRA analysts had picked the Hood as the ship that would carry Nazi agents to some clandestine mission in the States. Sinclair had pored over its manifest and had found nothing amiss. That meant these krauts were good at what they did. Hidden somewhere among the wounded soldiers, refugees, defectors, prisoners, and orphans, there was a cancerous Abwehr lump in desperate need of an excision.

Sinclair understood the strategy. If they had the means, it would be easier to sneak a team onto the Hood than it to send the lot of them in a U-boat, and they were letting the Americans use their own petrol.

There were only a few actual merchant marines aboard the Hood for her return voyage. It was simple for Sinclair to weave between the deck patrols and duck into an alcove to doff his wet suit and dump it over the rail. Beneath, he wore a well-traveled American Army uniform bearing the name 'Brown.' He concealed his pistol, knife, spider mittens, and riata underneath.

Sinclair pulled a spool of gauze wrap from his pocket and wrapped it around his head until it covered his whole pate and one of his eyes. He rubbed a bit of blush under its edges, like the pink of a healing burn. He hadn't had much experience applying stage makeup in his life before the war, but he'd certainly worn enough of it to pick up a trick here or there.

Between the bandages and the blonde scruff he'd cultivated over the last week, even if someone singled him out, they'd have a devil of a time recognizing him, whether from a Department Three dossier or one of his many screen credits.

Sinclair tapped his deck and snagged a fresh cigarette out. He struck a match on a guard rail and started puffing as he leaned and waited. It was only a few minutes before a strolling patrolman came upon him.

“Hey mate, you can't be out here,” the guard said. By his affectations he was Australian maybe, or a New Zealander. One of the ANZAC commonwealths for certain.

“Sorry, pal, give me a minute,” Sinclair replied, affecting his best American swagger and accent. He had to be careful not to go too 'cowboy,' however. He wouldn't want to be recognized. He yawned and stretched, explaining: “Gets stuffy down there, you know?”

“Yeah, they've crammed a right lot of you in there, haven't they?”

“Oh yeah, but it ain't nearly half as as tight as when they shipped us out,” Sinclair said.

“I suppose not,” the sailor said. He gave Sinclair a quick once-over as he lit up a cigarette of his own. He asked: “You got got right quick then, aye?”

“Car accident, actually, never even got to meet a single kraut,” Sinclair explained. “Rear-ended by a civilian, conked my melon, then the gas tank went right up, whoosh.”

“That's a tough break,” the sailor said. “Or a lucky one.”

“Don't feel so lucky,” Sinclair said, gesturing at his bandaged eye.

“Mate, I seen plenty of lads come back missing a lot more than a peeper, trust me there,” the sailor said.

“Yeah.”

The sailor ground flicked his cigarette over the rail. Sinclair watched the orange speck fall away and get swallowed by blue. He took one last drag and followed suit.

“Well, best you get back down there,” the sailor said. “You really can't be out here after six bells. You'll get used to it, I swear it.”

“I did once, 'spose I can do it again,” Sinclair sighed.

“That's the spirit,” the sailor said. Sinclair followed him to the nearest door and let the sailor hold it open for him. He stepped in and thanked the sailor for the conversation, then headed down into the guts of the ship.

He found the ward for the wounded easily enough. Rows upon rows of bunks were packed with soldiers, sailors, and airmen who'd been injured in training, in transit, and in just plain old accidents, just like 'Sergeant Brown' had been. Sinclair skirted past them.

The next deck down held the civilians, those few men and women moving between Britain and the States on sanctioned business. Each group had their own little cabin, all lined up down a long corridor.

Beneath them were refugees packed into another open hold rowed with bunks. Prisoners of war were at the very bottom, chained and caged and under constant watch. All of these unfortunates had so much vetting, so many eyes on them, and the definite destination of one kind of camp or another, that Sinclair didn't estimate that his Abwehr targets would be among them. That left the civilians. If he could pass as an American, they assuredly could, as well.

Sinclair took a deep breath, then started trying their door handles. The first two were locked, but the third swung inward with a squeal. Inside, he found old three men staring up at him. Each one had his nose buried in a dime store novel.

“What in the blazes?” one of them stammered.

“Exactly,” Sinclair slurred, “What are y'all doing in my room?”

“Sir, this is most assuredly our cabin,” another of the old timers said.

“You sure?” Sinclair asked, leaning against the door frame.

“Absolutely,” the third man exclaimed.

Sinclair had studied all three men as they spoke. He didn't recognize any of them as catalogued Abwehr agents. In addition, none displayed any tells, nor wisps of accents, nor any smudges or edges giving away the presence of wigs, makeup, or prosthetics. There were more cabins to check.

“Sorry 'bout that, boys,” Sinclair said. He stumbled back out of the back, muttering: “Banged my head is all. Bunk's around here somewhere.”

Before any of the geezers could reply, he awkwardly squealed the door shut behind him.

Sinclair noted the room number and continued to the next.

He'd passed by two more locked cabins and attempted a third. It was locked tight as well, but two seconds after he jiggled to knob, the door burst open. He staggered back in his best concussed stupor, stammering:

“What's the big idea here?”

Three buxom women were standing in the open door, seemingly ready to pounce. None bore arms, but each looked coiled up like a viper, with violence in their eyes.

“What do yer want, yer morngy bugger?” the closest one asked. She was a lithe blonde, with cascading locks and a balanced stance that could launch her into any direction at the drop of a hat. Her Yorkshire accent was so thick it was almost a caricature. Americans would love it, but she sounded like a parrot to him.

“Oh, you bet,” Sinclair slurred with a wide, goofy smile, “How'd a Joe like me get lucky enough to end up with three angels in my bunk?”

The trio shared a glance. A near-imperceptible nod from the blonde made the others smirk, and all three seemed to shrink and melt away. His wavering, hapless presence was no longer deemed a threat. The blonde reached out and touched his upper arm.

“Okay, yer wazzock. Yer berth is one floor up,” she said.

“One floor...” Sinclar leaned out of the doorway and looked up and down the hallway like it was the first time he'd ever seen. He chuckled and gingerly rubbed his bandaged head, saying: “Oh, damn, 'scuse my French, ladies. This is embarrassing. I took a header, you see...”

“Sorry tae 'ear that, but yer can't be 'ere,” the blonde interrupted.

“'Spose not. Well, guess I'll see you in God's own country, ladies,” Sinclair said.

“Yer be home soon. Nar if there's nowt else, sling yer hook 'fore we lamp yer,” the blonde said. Her smile looked so forced that it might as well have been painted on.

Sinclair gave her a lopsided smile and almost hooked his toe over his heel as he ambled away. He made his way back down the hall, not looking back. He heard the door shut and lock behind him. It hingers were silent; they'd been recently oiled, unlike any other hatch he'd used aboard the Hood.

Sinclair didn't let himself smile until he was safely around the corner and halfway up the stairs to the soldiers' berths.

“Good Lord, I am dangerously clever,” he muttered.

'God's own country.'

Anyone from Yorkshire would have recognized the county's nickname. Sinclair's comment should have confused the women. Instead, they assumed he was talking about the States.

Hampton Sinclair checked his watch. He'd been aboard the Henry Hood for all of two hours into a thirty day voyage and already found his targets. If he'd have been able to put on this kind of performance in front of a casting director, he would have gotten far more leading roles in the talkies than just the bumbling sidekick. When this was all over, he would go back to La La Land, and he would never settle to be another Spurs McKenzie again.

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Copyright © 2022 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Tyrelle Smith.